MacRitchie Reservoir Park

On Sunday, I was in an awful cranky mood, so Eoin crowbar-ed me off the couch, stuck me on a bus, and rolled me off at the MacRitchie Reservoir Park, to do some of the walks I have been wanting to do the last few weeks. We only really intended to do a few km (just the first bits around the reservoir) but we got a bit enthusiastic and walked 14.6 km - all the way around! The enthusiasm lasted until roughly the point-of-no-return, by the way, past about 9 km my feet were starting to drag a bit.

Our 14.6 km walk took nearly 4 hours.

Part of the reason I was so excited I wanted to keep walking after the first few kilometres was that we saw some awesome wildlife - monkeys being the prim(at)e example (ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha). We saw a family of macaques, a common sun skink, a heap of butterflies, an interesting caterpillar, some turtles, squirrels, damselflies and dragonflies.

Monkeys! (long tail macaques)

Turtles! (not pictured: Donatello)

The trails were really well maintained, varied a fair bit on the way around, but not too overcrowded. It was nice to get away from people a bit, and breathe some nice fresh air. It was an interesting contrast at points through the walk to look to our left and see rainforest filled with macaques, then to the right to see the manicured lawns of a golf club. Singapore, hey? The path is obviously fairly well walked, and not kind to shoes. Eoin and I counted 167 shoe fragments by the end of our walk - either Singaporeans are really into cheap Chinese knock off shoes, or just find this trail really sole destroying. Maybe I should stop typing now and put more photos here...

Lovely path with BAMBOO

Star flowers in flight. Afternoon delight. Aaaa-aaaa-aaaaaa. Fternoon delight.

One of the reasons we decided to push on and keep walking was that we spotted signs for a treetop walk, around in one of the less accessible parts of the park. It turned out to be a really worthwhile thing to do, despite the lying signs fudging distances to the suspension bridge like personal trainers fudge the number of crunches left in the set. It was a 250 m long, 25 m high steel bridge that wobbled in an interesting was as we wobbled over it. Not at all scary, just a lovely view over another reservoir to the north, and some worrying signs about what to do on the one-way bridge if you met a snake coming the other way.

View from the highest point of the bridge (well, lowest part of the valley)

After the bridge, we climbed a lookout tower accompanied by another (angrier) family of macaques, then made our way through some swampy land, through a golf course, and back to the reservoir. We found some Clouded Monitor Lizard skin, spiders, tiny fishies with shiny heads, more damselflies and some giant leaves.

By the time we got back to the bus stop, I was pretty footsore (thats a long way to walk to break in new shoes) but happy to have seen some real, non-grass green in Singapore. And happy to be heading back to a couch as well :) Saw some promising new hawker markets from the bus window (I'm looking at you, Bukit Timah!), so future excursions to the north-ish are definitely on the cards. Next adventure is the Perhentian Islands this weekend, more about that next week.

Marina Bay by Night

Marina Bay is the pretty bay area in the "city" of Singapore (not the burbs where we live). We went for a wander around from dusk to check out some of the beautiful night lights of Singapore, and we certainly weren't disappointed.

This is Marina Bay Sands, a truly huge hotel that has an infinity pool up the top there. One day, I want to go to that infinity pool. The hotel looks large-ish in this photo (and in all the photos of it I've seen), but up close it's astoundingly large. The hotel is from about $400-1650 SGD per night for a "non-event" Friday night... totally booked out for Grand Prix time, so I sadly can't check the ridiculous prices. Also a little picture of the other direction over the bay with pretty sparkly lights.

We got some satay skewers from Makansutra Glutton's Bay Hawker Centre, then headed over the Helix bridge to the big shopping centre in Marina Bay, and around to the Gardens by the Bay, behind the giant cricket stumps.

This was just a first, quick visit to the Gardens by the Bay, but once we saw the supertrees lit up at night, we couldn't avoid going to see them up close. There was also a "Songs of Singapore" concert on, so we got to hear some... lovely Hokkien pop songs while we waited for the light and sound display.

I took some videos of the light and music disply, but I'm not going to post it, because we decided that this place is going on the roster of places we are going to bring our friends and family to. So in the interests of not spoiling it, I'll wait until you're all here to show you.

Singapore lights are really, really pretty... ridiculously extravagant but well done. Got that rush of excitement and happy vibe that made me feel a bit at home in Singapore with this little excursion.

Cameron Highlands weekend

Good Friday is a public holiday in Singapore, so we went for our first overseas jaunt from Singapore - to Malaysia! We headed on a (theoretically) midnight bus (actually left at near 3 am) to Kuala Lumpur (about 5 hours with immigration and customs), then another bus to Tanah Rata (about 3 hours).

The epic trip was a lot longer than Google thinks it should have been.

Immediately after getting off the bus, we smelled an amazing meaty smell. Maybe it was because we hadn't eaten for about 13 hours, but we had the most amazing Ayam Goreng Berempah, a.k.a. Spicy Fried Chicken, that has ever been produced on the face of the earth.

Fragrant, spicy, coconutty, juicy, moist and delicious fried chicken. In the future, when the wind whispers, it will whisper "Tanah Rata chicken"

Went for a wander on trail 4, from Tanah Rata up to Brinchang, the next town along the main road through the Cameron Highlands. Found a waterfall, a broken bridge, a working bridge, got a little lost and found a school camp and some good mud puddles... Eventually headed into Brinchang to find the hotel we should have stayed in, a night market selling more delicious chicken, and the highlands specialities - corn and strawberries.

The look so delicious, but they tasted... salty.

Next day, we went on a walking tour up Gunung Jasar (1696 m) organised through our hotel (Father's Guesthouse). It was BRILLIANT - the leader (Jason Chin) was an ex-environmental lawyer who really knew his flora and fauna, and had some very interesting thing to say about conservation in Malaysia.

Walked from Tanah Rata (town over my right shoulder), and ended up in tea plantation over my left shoulder.

Who would ever believe he just walked 2 hours uphill?

This is the post-chocolate cake face :)

Whole group shot at peak - Heather (right) and Ben (in hat) were very nice walking companions.

After the peak, we descended 2-ish hours down into a Cameron Bharat Tea Plantation through a native Semai village. Jason had brought 6 bags of lollies for the kids of the settlement/tribe (I'm not sure what they are anymore. Like a tribe, but with satellite TV?). The walk down was pretty slippery and muddy, and both Eoin and I ended up a little muddy. We started in the higher altitude moss forests, and headed down through valleys, saw orchids, heard gibbons hooting in the treetops, smelled beehives, and mostly enjoyed the 20-23 degree weather.

Moss forest

Walking back down through the cloud layer

Semai settlement on the edge of the tea plantation

Getting their weekly lollies

From the village, it was a 45 minute walk through the plantation, and then back up to delicious, delicious ice mint tea. And the ice didn't make me sick, and I learned the orange pekoe is just the name for the newest developing, nearly-open leaf on a tea plant, and has no orange flavor (pekoe is the name of the send leaf, and pekoe souchong is the name of the third leaf).

Hiding all the muddy bits behind the tea plants!

Bharat Tea Plantation 

More tea plantation

Ice mint tea from the hills in the background

After a rest, the next thing on the list was a big post-walk Indian feed. Check. Sleep. Check.

Before...

And after.

On Sunday, it was mostly an epic trip home. We had a few hours in KL, where we tried to get roast chicken from KENNY ROGERS' CHICKEN SHOP and walked to see a mall that has a roller coaster in. Sadly, the Kenny Rogers Roasters we meant to eat in was closed (but never fear - they exist in Singapore as well!) and the roller coaster could only be ridden by going to a theme park. But Eoin got a quick round of mall archery in before we caught our last bus back to Singapore.

It will be mine. Oh yes, it will be mine.

Next time we're in KL, Gadget. It was in the Berjaya Times Square Mall. 

Shooting up a mall in KL. I don't think I should leave that caption.

Now finally home, where I am lying on the couch writing this, not quite able to fully breathe all the way in. I seem the have jarred my back (right between my shoulder blades) by lying on a floor last night (yep, walking up and down a mountain, several overnight buses and lugging a backpack was fine, but defeated by a floor), so it's an anti-inflammatories and ice pack kind of day. Maybe tomorrow, Kenny Rogers... maybe tomorrow...